bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish…

Can I file an extension?! I’m so close to a book finish, and my yarn order’s almost here!

Next week, I guess.

Meanwhile, let’s check in with Kat for the week’s Unravelings —

part i {making}

On Saturday, Elsa and I had a delightful time at our local coffee shop with each other, our journals, and stitching. She practiced her half double crochet for a beginner’s hat; I caught up on my long stitching and admired all the handmades on consignment. Artisan sourdough loaves, screen printed tees and bags, seasonal handknits, honey, jewelry, paintings.

I decided to vary my stitch length a bit…for no reason in particular

As for the yarn, we’ve got 5 games left in Linc’s JV basketball season, then varsity play-offs begin. I have 2- 3/4 skeins to go on my throw. If our team makes it to the top, I should finish the same time they do! Cheering hard here.

And a virtual hug + thanks go to Mary for eliminating all my excuses. Just as I started ‘yarn stalling’ for Elsa’s cropped cardigan, she took out the guess work and recommended Berroco Remix Light for its light weight and easy wear. (Choosing yarn delays a start for me by weeks. Sometimes, months!)

Kerttu Cardigan; rav link

Elsa nixed her original ‘tweedy oatmeal’ in favor of Berroco’s new Bubble Gum. (Hence today’s banner.) That sounds more like it, doesn’t it? Bubble gum over oatmeal. She’s 12, after all.

I hope to be back with a gauge swatch next week.

This is a good time to stop and say how grateful I am for the kind, creative, smart, and thoughtful friends I've met here in Blogland. What a special thing, to care for and be cared for by authentic people whose intention it is to expand...to connect with and learn from one another. 

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part ii {reading}

When we were still new at our UU church in Golden, Colorado, our then-associate minister said something like this: We’re not in the business of guilt. If you’re moved to connect [with God or Spirit] on a mountain, in a stream, or among the trees, then you ARE ‘at church‘ —

— and I knew we were in the right place.

That’s kind of how I felt reading Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning writer, naturalist, speaker, and ecophilosopher who lives in Seattle with a starling named Carmen. In her sixth book, Haupt decenters humankind and calls us to [be] in concert with the wilderness. The chapters each have one word titles — which I loved, of course, and can’t resist listing them here: Listen, Shed, Wander, Immerse, Alone, Unsee, Related, Speak, Grow, Create, Spiral.

(It was Alone, in fact, that got me back on the trail, which I wrote about on Monday.)

photo from lyandalynnhaupt.com

Every chapter, save for one toward the end, gleaned copious book flags and notes. And that one? It could’ve been me. Wrong timing. Tired or distracted. Or just not particularly resonant. One — out of 11

Haupt introduces the book with memories of presiding over ‘frog church’ after she read Story of a Soul by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux — as a fourth grader! She goes on to reassure the reader that this is not a book about organized religion, though religious readers may find much to appreciate — and at the same time, she loops in what I think of as ‘The Big 3″ — nature mystics Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and Francis of Assisi. Rooted offers a sense of space…for readers of any path, not just one.

After chapters on wandering vs. walking…benefits of being barefoot…hope as something that ‘allows brokenness and beauty to intertwine’…designating a space where you become a part of your surroundings…darkness as restoration + refuge…Rooted ends, naturally, with the author looking ahead.

In ‘Spiral,’ she acknowledges ‘essential death.’ This brief chapter, practical and ideal at the same time, is well worth the entire book. Haupt anticipates her own eventual end — acknowledging it’s still a struggle for her: All of this is an attempt at a reckoning with the end of my own life, the constant presence of an inevitability I am as yet unable to fully brook. She shares, in detail, what she’s doing now, at 53, for later: a few guidelines for her husband. Green burial research. The dress she’s hand stitching for when the time comes.

Rooted was just the thing for my return to spiritual reading in morning. (Only thing is, it set the bar high!) If you read it, or if you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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And this one’ll be a quickie, ’cause I feel like I’ve used up my word count:

From the publisher: It’s December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help. 

From me: I downloaded this in search of an ‘easy listen’ while cleaning our house. I’d just finished listening to Wellness, and, turned out, this was [sort of] a small slice of that. Wellness, Ultra Lite…? Clocking in at 6-hrs (less, at 1.5x), it chimed in with the middle-aged experience of raising children, the transition of aging/lost parents, work and life (dis)satisfaction — with a ‘lost person twist’ toward the end. Other than an at-risk child and maybe her social worker (who was also one of the in-laws), I didn’t really care about any of the other characters. Possibly because there were lots of them? And this was not a long book…

Flight felt like it could’ve aired on the Lifetime Television cable network. Or maybe it’d come on after Party of Five? Which is fine. It was suitable. But I think it was just that.

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What are you making these days? Any kind of making! Plans? Decisions? Something yummy to eat? Any reading recommendations?